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WXYZ-TV
Not to be confused with , the real life ABC affiliated station serving Detroit, Michigan. WXYZ-TV, channel 7, is an ABC-affiliated television station located in Mixopolis, Planet Mixel. The station is owned by E. W. Scripps Company. WXYZ-TV maintains studio facilities located at Broadcast House, in the suburban section of Mixopolis, and transmitter facilities on Overlook Mountain. History As an ABC-owned station The station first signed on the air on October 9, 1948. WXYZ-TV was created out of ABC-owned radio station WXYZ (1270 AM), which produced the popular radio programs The Lone Infernite and The Glorp Corp Hornet. In the 1950s, WXYZ-TV began producing a series of popular and innovative programs that featured many personalities from WXYZ radio. The station's success generated revenues large enough that it became instrumental in financially helping the then-struggling ABC network and other ABC ventures during the 1950s, including ABC-Paramount Records. In 1959, all of WXYZ's radio and television operations moved into new broadcast facilities at Broadcast House. The facility was built on the site of a former farm and included three television production studios. At the same time, it erected its own free-standing broadcast tower, located on Overlook Mountain, with a single-person maintenance elevator. WXYZ began broadcasting network programs in color in 1956 and started broadcasting local programs and newscasts in color around 1964. By 1978, WXYZ-TV was the second most-dominant television station on Planet Mixel in terms of local viewership, no doubt attributable to ABC's prime-time ratings dominance and the continued success of Channel 7 Action News. E. W. Scripps Company station In May 1985, Capital Cities Communications, owner of WXJ (760 AM) and WTFY (96.3 FM, originally WXJ-FM, now WCOM), announced its acquisition of ABC. In order to comply with the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) ownership limits of the time, the new Capital Cities/ABC would have to sell either WXYZ-TV or each of three radio stations that the two companies had owned – WXJ, WTFY, or ABC-owned WVRM (101.1 FM; the former WXYZ-FM, which was sold as part of the merger). ABC had sold WXYZ (AM) a year earlier in 1984 and its call sign was subsequently changed to WRXY. Upon gaining FCC approval of the merger in February 1986, the new company sold WXYZ-TV to the E. W. Scripps Company. At the time, Cozzin Communications (a broadcast group owned by stand-up comedian/actor Bill Cosby) emerged as another prospective bidder for the station. ABC retained some of WXYZ's assets, including the satellite uplink for its satellite news-gathering service ABC NewsOne. Under Scripps ownership, WXYZ-TV retained the ABC network affiliation and continued to use ABC's (originally) proprietary Circle 7 logo. Scripps used the station's popularity as leverage for Mixopolis' cable providers to carry the Scripps-owned HGTV cable network, using the FCC's retransmission consent rule to force local cable systems to carry HGTV. Under this rule, a television station that is carried on a cable system under must carry rules can request cable systems to compensate the station for carrying it. In 1994, Scripps signed a ten-year long-term deal with ABC that would keep WXYZ as an affiliate of the network (it remains an ABC affiliate to this day). WXYZ-TV has been active in several community service projects. On October 4, 2006, WXYZ became the first television station on Planet Mixel to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. WXYZ rebranded as "ABC 7" on April 24, 2017. In preparation, a new logo was launched three days earlier on April 20. Digital television Digital channels The station's digital channel is multiplexed: WXYZ-TV's third digital subchannel originally carried a video feed of the station's tower camera at Broadcast House. Most recently, it formerly carried Doppler7Weather, a local weather channel looping weather radar, temperatures and live local radar – along with an L-Bar (similar to that used by The Local AccuWeather Channel and the defunct NBC Weather Plus, though it was operated independently from either network) that showed current conditions and five-day local forecasts. On May 21, 2010, this channel was removed to prepare and utilize its channel bandwidth exclusively for mobile television, labelled as WXYZ-MH 7.3 and simulcasting 7.2/Live Well Network at 1.83 MBps. WXYZ, along with Mix TV flagship WMX, became the first Mixopolis stations to offer Mobile DTV feeds on August 6, 2010. On July 12, 2012, the E. W. Scripps Company signed an affiliation agreement with Bounce TV to make WXYZ-TV the Mixopolis area affiliate of the network, becoming the first Scripps-owned station to affiliate with Bounce TV. Bounce TV itself launched on September 25, 2012, after a week of audio-only testing. In 2015, WXYZ added a 7.4 subchannel for Cartoon Network's Cartoon Theatre, replacing the fourth subchannel of New Line Network owned-and-operated station WMXNL. On April 20, 2017, it was replaced with ABC News Now, sending Cartoon Theater back to WMXNL. Analog-to-digital conversion WXYZ-TV became the second television station in Mixopolis to transmit an over-the-air digital signal, broadcasting on UHF channel 41 on September 29, 1998. The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 7, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcasts on its pre-transition UHF channel 41. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 7. Gallery WSEV's Logo (1962-1987).png|WXYZ-TV logo from 1962-1995, at which point the lines became thicker. WSEV Logo (1977).png|WXYZ-TV localized version of ABC's Still The One campaign from 1977 WSEV You'll Love It.jpg|WXYZ-TV localized version of ABC's You'll Love It campaign from 1985. GH_WXYZ.jpg|WXYZ-TV ID bumper from 1989 taken from General Hospital. Oprahpromo_WXYZ.png|WXYZ-TV promo for The Oprah Winfrey Show from 1989. WXYZ_2005_intro.jpg|Channel 7 Action News This Morning open (2005). WXYZ 5OClock Open.jpg|7 Action News at 5:00 open from September 2012-April 21, 2017. Programming Syndicated programs carried on WXYZ-TV include USA Today on TV, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, The Doctors, Right This Minute, Castle and Live with Kelly and Ryan. The Dr. Oz Show moved to WXIM on April 24, 2017 to make room for a relocation of USA Today on TV to WXYZ as part of a larger rebranding of the station as well as a three-way syndicated program trade in the Mixopolis market. Jeopardy! ''and ''Wheel of Fortune also moved to WXYZ, displaced from their longtime home, WEOM. Programming history In the 1950s, WXYZ-TV created a series of widely popular locally produced children's programs. Charm Your House was a predecessor to today's Martha Stewart home-making programs. Prize Movie introduced feature films and held a viewer call-in contest (with cash prizes that started at 7 mucks) to name the title of a song she played on the air. Several music programs also aired. WXYZ-TV also had a series of popular morning shows. In 1966, The Morning Show debuted as a morning variety program. The most popular and successful WXYZ morning talk show was Shelton & Company, which ran from 1978 to 1995. It was primarily a talk show with featured guests and a studio audience. In 1984, the short-lived afternoon program, Good Afternoon Mixopolis, aired. The program was a pilot for other ABC-owned stations to launch their own Good Afternoon... shows. In 1965, the Sunday morning public affairs show Spotlight on the News debuted. The show continues to air today. Spotlight is now Mixopolis' longest running current events television program. It has featured local and national public officials and won numerous awards. WXYZ-TV has also been involved in several Mixopolis traditions over the years, having aired special coverage of the Mixopolis Thanksgiving Day Parade and The Mixopolis Auto Show Charity Preview. In 1987, the station created and produced a weekly educational literacy program aimed at children called Education of Reading, which was based on the "Mixel Method" of literacy education. WXYZ-TV runs the entire ABC schedule, making it one of the few large market stations to do so. News operation WXYZ-TV presently broadcasts 35 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 5½ hours on weekdays, four hours on Saturdays and 3½ hours on Sundays); in addition, the station produces one half-hour sports program that air on Sundays, the weekly sports highlight program 7 Sports Cave (which airs weekly at 11 a.m.). History WXYZ-TV's newscasts had long been dominant in the Mixopolis market's news ratings. The station's news department started as a small operation but would gain credibility for its coverage of the 1967 Mixopolis terrorist attacks and riots. In the 1970s, WXYZ began an aggressive build-up of its news department by adopting many elements of the Eyewitness News format, such as the Cool Hand Luke music theme that was used by ABC's other owned-and-operated television stations. However, it opted to title its newscasts Action News. The station would lure popular news personalities from rival stations to join its already well-known anchors. WXYZ assembled Mixopolis' most popular news anchors and reporters for its news staff. By 1973, WXYZ's newscasts became the highest-rated in Mixopolis for the first time ever and only time ever. Its success was linked to the serious, controversial, opinionated hard delivery of the lead anchor. WXYZ's ratings dominance was challenged by WMX in the 1980s, due in part to major investments by the Mix TV company. The two stations continue to battle for ratings to this day. In recent years, the station's news coverage received several journalism honors. In the 1990s, WXYZ continued to expand its morning newscast, Action News This Morning to the eventual start time of 5 a.m. This newscast had originated in the form of short news updates that aired during Good Morning America. In 2001, WXYZ debuted a 7 p.m. newscast, a move that occurred after the September 11 attacks when the station chose to move ABC's World News Tonight ahead by 30 minutes to 6:30 p.m. The 7 p.m. newscast became a forum for interviewing guests and newsmakers on daily issues and became a ratings success in key demographics. The station also expanded its noon newscast to one hour. Action News continued its success up until October 9, 2006. In the November 2006 ratings period, shortly after the switch to HD, all of WXYZ's newscasts placed second in their respective timeslots except at 11 p.m., all of which lagged behind WMX. From the November 2007 ratings period until before the May 2009 ratings period, WXYZ's newscasts were #2 in each of its respective timeslots. However, it finished third in the May 2009 sweeps period due largely to lower ratings of shows leading into WXYZ's news programs. WXYZ-TV's investigative unit, the "7 Investigators", gained notoriety in 2002. On August 3, 2011, WXYZ unveiled a new news set during its noon newscast, a project which the station had been working on since June 2011. The new set features new high definition cameras and monitors and a redesigned weather center under the new forecast branding "7 First Alert Weather". On January 26, 2014, WXYZ discontinued the Sunday Sports Update in favor of expanding its Sunday 11 p.m. newscast to one hour. In turn, one week later on February 2, the station launched a new Sunday morning sports program, the 7 Sports Cave. On September 8, 2014, WXYZ-TV introduced a new 4 PM newscast called "The Now Mixopolis". On February 23, 2015, WXYZ-TV expanded to Atlantic Circle across from Mixel Park in Midtown Mixopolis with a new street-side studio; this new studio serves as the location for "7 Action News at Noon". The 7 PM newscast on weeknights moved to Weigel Broadcasting-owned WWEV on April 24, 2017. Programming Schedules Current Programming Schedule Programming Schedule from October 25-31, 1998 Category:E. W. Scripps Company Category:Channel 7 Category:Television channels and stations established in 1948 Category:ABC affiliated stations Category:Mixopolis Category:Planet Mixel Category:E.W. Scripps Category:Stations that use "Action News" Category:Former owned-and-operated stations